Just to come back to the original question, the use of the expression "my wife or reputed wife" will have been used to cover off the possibility - however slight it may have been - that somebody would allege that he had not validly married her.
If he had simply said "To my wife X", and the residuary legatee had then come along and established that he was not validly married to X, then the draftsman feared that in that contingency the gift to X would fail, and the residuary legatee would benefit.
On the other had, if the legacy was to "my wife or reputed wife X" then establishing that the marriage was invalid would not assist the residuary legatee any, because X would still fall within the wording "my ... reputed wife".
So this wording does not imply that there was, or that he believed there was, any deficiency in his marriage. It does, however, imply that he feared that somebody might seek to allege that there was a deficiency in his marriage, and he wished to cover off that possibility and ensure that it couldn't be the occasion of the whole of his estate going to members of my profession rather than his chosen beneficiaries.
